


Self

by otatop (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Emotional Hurt, Gen or Pre-Slash, Identity Issues, M/M, Mentions of Canonical Character Death, Morse Code, Not Finale Compliant, Panic Attacks, Post Possession, Season/Series 03B Spoilers, Werewolf!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:19:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1443361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/otatop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’ll never be Stiles again. He’ll never be human, he’ll never be his father’s son, he’ll never be Scott’s best friend because he doesn’t know who that person is</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JoulesIsIronic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoulesIsIronic/gifts).



> Nearly all of this is Stiles dealing with his anxiety/panic. Please read the tags, and if you're still not sure, I will put a more detailed description of the story in the end notes. Please!!! Let me know if something more needs to be tagged! I'm always very wary about having not tagged enough so please please please let me know if I should add/change something

Stiles doesn’t use his new werewolf strength. Not on the lacrosse field, not to vacuum under the couch, not to push his jeep out of a muddy ditch. He won’t do it.

He accidentally breaks the mirror in his room and doesn’t tell his dad, just throws the pieces out in their own garbage bag (careful, careful, careful not to cut himself- that’s important).

(It wasn’t really an accident)

He starts leaving the door to the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink open so that the mirror reflects only the darkness and the wall. After the fourth time, his dad removes it while he’s at school and Stiles doesn’t care enough to be embarrassed about the coddling.

He disables the webcam on his computer and puts electrical tape over the camera on his phone and packs away his old Nikon and starts wearing his mother’s locket to keep himself anchored every second of every day. He plays with it constantly, purposefully or absentmindedly, sometimes picturing the yellowing photo of his mom kissing his dad on the cheek with one of her feet popped up behind her.

There’s a nightlight in the hallway that he didn’t put there and that’s how he knows his dad understands.

He hangs out in the kitchen when his dad cooks so that he has a real, human excuse to smell the food.

He wears his oldest sneakers that slip off easily so that he can’t walk or run too fast.

He buys noise cancelling headphones and drowns out the world with music.

He does anything and everything to prevent himself from doing something he was able to do as the nogitsune. He just wants to feel like himself. He just wants to feel like the old Stiles who stayed behind and binged on research. He wants to get back all the times he hadn’t taken advantage of his humanity. When was his last day as himself? Was it before the nogitsune? Before the nematon? Before werewolves? Before his mother’s death?

What would he have done differently on his last day of being himself if he had known? Hindsight is supposed to always be 20/20 but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he would do. He doesn’t know who he was or who he is now he doesn’t _know who he is_.

His father comes home to find all of the review mirrors on the Jeep smashed and the upstairs bathroom door locked.

Stiles pretends that he can’t hear his dad knocking and asking if he’s ok because he’s wearing his headphones and he’s _not supposed to be able to hear that_. He turns the music up and waits. It only takes a moment before he feels the vibration of his dad knocking on the door, this time lower, right behind Stiles’ back in a familiar pattern of dots and dashes. _10-73_. How does he receive? He wants say he’s fine. He’s just taking a shit. He’s fine.

Instead, he knocks back with lazy knuckles over his shoulder _5150_ and _10-45a_. Psychiatric hold, condition of patient is good. He gets a _10-4_ and a drawn out _pizza 4 dinner. Love._ Stiles doesn’t answer.

He’s not wearing his watch but he stays until the tiny window over the toilet becomes dark and he has to turn the light on ( _he has to_ ). His butt is so far past sore that it’s just numb and the pain has seeped up into his back instead. It’s not incentive to move; in fact, it keeps him where he is longer. The pain is just as much of an anchor as his locket even though everyone has told him not to use pain as an anchor. Bullshit. You do whatever you have to to keep yourself human. Stiles failed the first time around, he’s not about to do it again.

At some point, not long after the sun had gone down, his dad comes back and taps on the door in a little 5 note _“Skunk in the barnyard_ ” tune. Stiles returns with the answering two knocks but he doesn’t come out for dinner. His dad usually lets him be; he gets better, he always comes out eventually.

Usually.

By midnight (he thinks), he still hasn’t come down from his crisis, panicked thoughts and questions still bouncing around his head so loud he probably doesn’t even need his headphones. More panic builds at the thought that he might never come down, like a bad trip that never ends. He’ll never be Stiles again. He’ll never be human, he’ll never be his father’s son, he’ll never be Scott’s best friend because he doesn’t know who that person is and he doesn’t know how to be that person and he can’t leave them alone, he can’t, _he can’t_.

And maybe he’d been making some type of sound, maybe he’d been growling or crying or screaming, because there’s a frantic pounding against the door and it’s not his father. He doesn’t know how he knows that, he doesn’t think about how he knows, but it’s not his dad knocking and suddenly he’s being pushed forward as the lock is broken and the door is shoved open with supernatural strength. He goes with the motion, falling forward onto his hands and knees and cringing at the not-so-numb feeling of his backside and bending his head forward until his face is hidden in his forearms.

Derek kneels down beside him on the tile floor and tries to pull him up with gentle hands on his shoulders. It takes no strength at all for Stiles to keep himself down; if Derek really wanted him up he had the strength to do so and Stiles wouldn’t have fought it because _he wasn’t strong_.

“Leave me _alone_ ,” he moans into the floor, surprised at how dry and cracked his voice comes out. It’s not the kind of gentle hoarse that comes from disuse. Derek slides his hands from his shoulder to his waist until he can put one arm awkwardly around his middle in a strange sort of pseudo-hug. He pulls again, not as gently this time, and Stiles goes with the motion because he _has to_ but he keeps his arms up, keeps his face buried in his arms and his hands curled around the sides of his head.

“Look at me, Stiles. Please.”

He almost does just because _Derek_ said _please_ but he shakes his head and tries to twist into himself, tries to bring his knees up to hide himself in them until he’s come down. But Derek holds him upright, gets a leg over his lap to keep him clamming up and clutches him so tight Stiles’ shoulder digs into his diaphragm. Stiles keeps his eyes squeezed tight, tries to suffocate himself in his arms and lets out a guttural sound from deep in his chest.

“Where’s Scott?” he manages out. Scott was always good about this, always understanding and accommodating and held him sweetly and told him to take his time and made sure nice music was playing over his headphones like cellos or a quiet choir. Derek though, Derek rips of his headphones and pulls down his arms.

“I told your dad to get me the next time this happens. Scott is too nice to do what needs to be done. Open your eyes Stiles.”

Stiles shoves with his arms but can’t break the hold. “Who the fuck do you think you are, huh? How would you know what I need? You think I need you? I _don’t_. I don’t need you. Go away. Let me do this on my own. I’m fine.” He still doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t trust Derek’s methods, doesn’t want to know what he’ll see when he opens them. He wants his headphones back to drown out the water thumping in the pipes and the hum of the telephone wires outside. He wants to bury his face and Derek’s neck as the older wolf hushes him and coos in his ear. But Derek _won’t_. He pulls Stiles up until he’s standing and holds him as far away as possible by two impossibly strong hands wrapped around his shoulders.

“Your way isn’t working. Scott’s way isn’t working. None of this is working because you aren’t _facing_ this. You’re denying who you are now and it’s just going to build up until you can’t hold it in anymore.”

For a long time, Stiles stands stock still, focusing on the constant pressure of Derek’s hands on his shoulders until his breathing comes down. He thinks of his locket, of the round little picture, of Derek’s ability to hold him like he’s holding him together. Eventually, his own heartbeat stops thundering in his ears and all he can hear is Derek’s. It’s faster than he would think from someone who has such a stony demeanor. The room smells like panic and anxiety and worry and cleaning products and he can hear his dad puttering around in the kitchen and the high pitched wiz of electricity as his phone gets a text downstairs on the couch where he left it on silent.

The panic hits him again so hard and fast that it shocks his eyes open as he’s assaulted by the smell of blood and pain and he can hear the piercing, inhuman shriek of Argent’s stolen beacon and he can still feel the rush that surges through his veins from attacking Scott in the animal clinic.

The lights are off and he can see _everything_ and he’s _not supposed to be able to do that_. He grabs at Derek’s elbows, squeezes them with a strength he’s not supposed to have. But Derek just steps closer until all Stiles can see is the blue glow of his eyes- mirror images of the eyes he has so desperately tried to avoid because all they are are reminders of the people he’s killed and the things he’s done all the strife he put his dad and his friends through. Allison is dead because he couldn’t hold it together until the end. Isaac is gone. Lydia hasn’t smiled in weeks. Scott- Jesus, Scott is barely holding them all together and Stiles is just making it worse for everyone around him. Everything would have been so much better if it had been him instead- if, maybe if he’d fought hard enough for control he could have been there, stepped in front of the swor-

Derek slams him into the wall so hard his head cracks a bit of tile. It hurts and then it doesn’t- healed in a matter of seconds. Derek’s face is furious, his fangs dropping to join his shifted eyes.

“Don’t you dare,” he growls out, so close that Stiles can feel the heat of his breath on his face. “Don’t you dare wish that. Don’t you fucking think for a second that anyone wants that. You’d throw it all away? Everything everyone has tried to do to help you because you can’t stop living in the fucking past? Do-”

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite,” Stiles spits in his face. As far as he’s concerned, his anxiety is nothing compared to the self-sacrificing bullshit Derek gets up to.

Derek’s clawed hands come to his face, faster than Stiles’ own new reflexes can counter. He squeezes his head, hard enough to worry, gentle enough not to hurt. “You want to know the fucking difference between us, Stiles? Everything I did was my own decision. _My_ _choices_ killed people, _my_ actions- not just my body. Are you saying you think I deserve to die, too? I should have died in the fire with the rest of my family? I should have died with Paige? I should have died so many fucking times over. If that’s what you think of yourself, you must think I’m a fucking monster that needs to be put down.”

Stiles tries in vein to shake his head but Derek’s grip doesn’t waver. He doesn’t think that, _he doesn’t_. Derek has only ever been an asshole who used to make stupid decisions- never a- not a- not like Stiles. He grips the wrists next to his face, holds on to Derek to keep himself upright. “You’re not a monster,” he protests. “You’re Derek.” His eyes and throat sting as hot tears start to spill down his cheeks. “I don’t think that. I don’t want you to die. Please don’t die.” The thought of losing Derek is too much and he doesn’t think about why. “You’re not a monster; you’re just Derek,” he repeats.

For the briefest of seconds, Stiles thinks that Derek might kiss him he’s leaning in so close. But the older werewolf presses their foreheads together, his hands easing from squeezing to cradling, comforting, and eyes closed. “You’re still just Stiles.”

“I don’t know who I am _,_ ” Stiles whispers, afraid that the confession will be met with the same hostility. Derek snorts in his face and opens his eyes. So close, Stiles can’t ignore how pretty the blue is.

“You’re barely seventeen; you’re not supposed to know who you are, dumbass.”

For some reason, Stiles laughs once quietly through the tears. 

"I can't stop reliving it," he confesses. One of Derek's thumbs comes down to wipe at his wet cheek.

"It'll get better."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Stiles refuses to come to terms with his new werewolf powers/self because the sensations remind him too much of his experience being possessed by the nogitsune. He has trouble dealing with his sense of self. There is a brief mention of him wishing he had died instead of Allison but no actual thoughts of suicide. Nearly all of this deals with Stiles in a state of panic, anxiety, identity crisis.


End file.
